How To Grow Your Own Veggies On A Budget

Growing your own vegetables doesn’t have to be expensive if you know which choices to make...

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Starting A Vegetable Garden

When you first start vegetable gardening, you may feel like you’ll have quite some money to spend: you need things like tools, containers, tunnels, seeds or seedlings, climbing racks,... The list goes on and on.

If you buy all these things in specialized stores, you’ll spend several hundreds of Dollars, just to get started.

Trust me: been there, done that, got way too many T-shirts...

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Creativity Is A Money-Saver

But (vegetable) gardening is like everything else in life: you can make it as expensive or as cheap as you want.

With a little imagination and some creativity, you can build your own productive vegetable garden, without having to spend an arm and a leg.

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Save Money, Go Organic

If you choose to go for an organic vegetable garden, you can save even more, since you don’t have to spend money on expensive pesticides and fertilizers. You can just make them yourself, using the weeds you find in your garden, or everyday kitchen stuff.

I’ll show you how to do all this and give you some of my recipes in one of my following posts.

Gardening On A Budget Tips

I’ve collected some budget-friendly tips you can use to set up your own vegetable garden.

Source: Windowfarms

Did you know you don’t even need to have an actual garden to grow your own veggies?

Almost everything can be grown in containers. You can have your own homegrown veggies if you only have a balcony or even just a south-faced window.

For people who don’t have a lot of space, vertical gardening or even window-farming is the way to go. I’ll tell you more about that in one of my future articles.

So, back to the tips on gardening on a budget.

Because I have so many, I’ll be sharing them in a series of posts. Make sure you don’t miss out on any and follow me now (@simplymike)

You can subscribe to my RSS feed or newsletter at the bottom of this post.

DIY & Recycling: Everyone Can Do It. You Too!

If you feel like running away screaming when you hear the words DIY, please don’t. It’s all very easy. Just a little over a year ago, I had never held a hammer before. Until one day I decided I wanted to build an insect hotel. I found someone to explain the basics to me, and now I’m building my own raised beds, trellises and everything else.. If you can’t find anyone to help you get started, simply go find some basic tutorials on YouTube. They can be a big help

And remember not to be too hard to yourself: your veggies won’t care if their trellis is not perfect. As long as what you create can fulfill its purpose, it is more than good enough.

By applying the DIY-principle, you can basically start your garden without having to spend a single cent. All you need is a little time and effort.

If you don’t have a creative mind, just hop over to a site like Pinterest and do a search for ‘DIY gardening’. You’ll find loads of ideas that are simple and cheap.

There are a whole lot of objects you can recycle and put to use in your garden. You can make a trellis out of bike wheels and cord. Or use old ladders and wine racks. You can use empty egg boxes as sowing trays...

The only limit is your imagination.

Here are some more ideas:

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Make your own gardening beds.

Buying a gardening bed can be really expensive. But why would you pay for them if you can easily make them yourself out of old wood pallets?

You can find loads of step-by-step guides on Youtube and Pinterest.

Here's an example tutorial

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Make your own plant labels

Get creative with sticks, corks and other stuff to create your own plant labels.

See some examples here

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Make Mini Greenhouses

When planting out your seedlings, you can protect them against heavy weather and slugs. Simple take an empty water bottle, cut it in half and place the upper part over the seedling. It’s like a mini- greenhouse that also keeps out slugs.

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Everything can become a planter

You don’t need to buy expensive pots and containers. If you just take a look around, you will notice that there are a lot of items in your day-to-day life that can be transformed into decorative planters.

Think in terms of an old closet, empty tin cans, old tires, suitcases, or even shoes or boots.

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If you pay attention, you’ll soon notice your world is filled with things you can use as a planter.

(Do remember to make a few holes in the bottom of whatever you are using as a planter, so the water has a way out)

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Recycled Windows

Old windows are perfect to be re-used in the garden. You can use them to create a cold frame, or - if you know your way around tools - build your own greenhouse with them.

You can find a tutorial here